Pages

Monday, November 14, 2016

Four Tools for Making Audio Recordings on Chromebooks

A couple of weeks ago I was mentioned in a Tweet from someone who was looking for suggestions for tools that his students could use to create audio recordings on their Chromebooks. The following are my suggestions based on my preferences.

1. Vocaroo - this is the simplest of all of the recording tools. To record you simply go to Vocaroo.com, hit the recording button, and start talking. When you're done speaking you can download the recording as an MP3 or share it online by distributing the link assigned to your recording or by embedding it into a blog or website. With the simplicity of Vocaroo comes some limitations including the lack of an option to edit your recording. Learn more about Vocaroo in my video tutorial on it.

2. Twisted Wave - Through TwistedWave you can create and edit spoken audio recordings from scratch. Your completed tracks can be exported to Google Drive and SoundCloud. If you have existing audio tracks in your SoundCloud or Google Drive account you can also import it into TwistedWave to edit those audio tracks. TwistedWave's audio editing tools include options for fade-in, fade-out, looping, sound normalization, and pitch adjustments. The editor also includes the typical track clipping tools that you would expect to see in an audio editing tool. Learn how to use Twisted Wave by watching the tutorial on my YouTube channel.

3. SoundCloud - SoundCloud's online platform lets students record and publish from their free accounts. Recordings can be made private or public. Students can add cover images to their recordings which is nice way to provide a visual representation of what their podcasts are about. SoundCloud offers an option to insert comments into the track of a recording. That feature offers a nice way for teachers to provide their students with time-stamped feedback. Learn more about recording on SoundCloud by watching this tutorial.

4. Mic Note is a free Chrome app that allows you to create voice recordings, text notes, and image-based notes on one concise notebook page. The notes that you record with your voice can be time-stamped by clicking on your Mic Note note page while you're recording. You can also take notes without recording any audio. All notes support inclusion of images and links. The best part of Mic Note is that you can sync all of your notes to your Google Drive or Dropbox account. Mic Note is featured in this video on my YouTube channel.